In Each Other's Silence
by Servant of Anubis
Summary: Oneshot. When people have nothing else, they have each other. A look at what an unusual friendship might be like. Not a romance.


It's short, only a few words over a thousand. Just a look at what a friendship between two unlike people might be like. Set after the series ended. Probably the only thing I'll ever write that's set after the series ended. (No! It can't be over! Blasphemy!) Ahem.

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There are many different types of relationships that are called friendships: superficial ones, deep ones, shallow, false, true, and then, there's my friendship with you. You can't describe it with a single word because it's just too different from what people call friendship. Really, I'm not even sure that word does it justice

Not having anyone else, losing fake friend after fake friend because I was too blind to know the difference, I'm shattered and alone. You are distant, avoiding your emotions with such a blinding ferocity that you drive away anyone wishing to have a 'normal' relationship; you are strong and cold, and also alone.

In my desperate and seemingly futile search for something, light maybe, in my suffocating darkness, I gravitated to you, sitting with you once and then gradually beginning to follow you. Like a lost puppy that's been kicked one too many times, I sought a strong figure to shelter me. I can only imagine what thoughts must have run through your mind when you noticed my tailing. I don't even know how I found you; most of your free time is spent in the computer lab or on the roof, where you will be left in peace. Yet somehow I found you at lunch one day. All the other seats were taken but near you; we ate in silence that day. Usually a situation like that makes me uncomfortable, but it didn't this time. You didn't ask anything, you didn't tell me to leave. We were just there, and we existed comfortably in each other's silence. It's been like that since then, and although we've added a few brief words and a nod or two of the head, we still basically exist in that silence. You never had anyone, and I lost everyone, and in our unspoken loneliness we found solace.

And so it goes. We meet at the bakery in the morning; when I round the corner you raise your hand in a silent 'hello' and I smile my small broken smile in a silent 'good morning'. We walk to school in silence and then go our separate ways, you raising you hand in a silent 'see you later' and I smiling my small broken smile in a silent 'alright'. We go through the school day in our normal routine. We have no classes together, expect physical education, in which I am horrible, whereas you, tall and athletic, easily surpass the teacher's expectations. So I watch you intently most of the class; it's sparked some interesting rumors questioning my sexuality, but I don't care. Then comes lunch: we choke down cafeteria food on the steps near the technology center.

Other classmates see us and ask themselves, 'How can they be friends? They're so different! They're nothing like each other.'

Sometimes a short conversation springs up but those occurrences are rare. You start the majority of these sporadic attempts at communication, your deep smooth voice making me jump, frightening me because it's similar in tone to his. Most often the exchange is about some safe subject, like school. We don't talk about family, we don't talk about dueling, we don't talk about home. It seems better that way.

Lunch ends and we finish off the school day. I meet you by the front gate; you raise your hand in a silent 'hey' and I smile my small broken smile in a silent 'hello'. We walk the café that is partnered with the bakery. We sit at a little table by the windows; I order a cup of tea and a cream puff, and you order a cup of coffee, which you drink straight, no sugar, no cream. We're both desperately stalling, we both know it, as if we could hold off on going home forever. The café stop is rather recent, if I can track the flow of time properly. You used to get a ride directly home via one of your smaller limos, but one day about a month ago you were waiting at the gate, and you've waited there everyday since. I wonder if you did it for me, but you don't explain, and I don't ask, so I'm not sure. The drinks are soon finished, so we leave, you raising your hand in a silent 'see you tomorrow' and I smiling my small broken smile in a silent 'okay'. From there we go our separate ways.

I wonder what you return home to. Long hours of staring at computer screens while you work, foregoing food and sleep unless absolutely necessary, until your body refuses to cooperate otherwise; trying to coax a conversation out of your little brother who has come to find the comforts of his games, your games, to be more substantial than real life, so much so that he's slowly losing contact with reality, leaving you practically alone in your huge mansion.

I return home to a dark apartment where the echoes of my darker half still linger even though he's been gone for almost a year, beckoning me to follow the same lost path he did, to follow him to insanity; the increasingly rare letters from my archeologist father, telling me things that I don't want to hear: that he has a girlfriend, that he's going to be back in Egypt for a while, that he's considering institutionalizing me if I don't go to my therapist appointments. I ignore these letters now. They used to mean a great deal to me, but I'm slowly adjusting to the idea that he's lost hope for me.

Then the night passes, somehow, and we repeat the next day the same as the one before it, on and on, in an endless cycle of life in which we cling to each other for support. Teetering on the edge, we hold on tightly, afraid of falling, even more afraid of ourselves, that we're beginning to wonder just how bad it would be, if we let go and felt the ground.

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I figure everyone knows who they are now. Please tell me what you think.


End file.
